Thursday, November 19, 2015

Thursday night NFL debacle

It makes one wonder. Are they incompetent, or just sadistic towards the fans? They would be the NFL schedule makers in cahoots with their TV network. How else to explain the two teams featured on Thursday night football? Tennessee Titans vs. Jacksonville Jaguars? In prime time? Really?

In an already pitiful AFC South division (no team is even at .500), we're force fed the dregs, plankton, bottom-feeders, whatever? And it wasn't like this was unforeseeable when they made out the schedule months ago. Most everybody expected the Tits and Jags to be lousy this year.

And to no great surprise, they put on a regular yawn fest of a game. QB Marcus Mariota is a rookie playing on a bad team. Blake Bortles is -- well -- Blake Bortles. And the Jags are the Jags. On the last play of the game, with his Tits needing a touchdown to win, Mariota set up for a hail-Mary pass into the end zone. He was sacked. Of course he was. A thousand one, a thousand two, a thousand five, etc, THROW THE DAMN BALL!!!. Heaving it into the end zone with 7 Jag defenders waiting on it and expecting a miracle touchdown was highly unlikely -- but at least they had a shot. But no, MM waited too long and got sacked. No shot. Dumb.

It was interesting to note a couple names of Tennessee players. A tight end named Superman that came from Youcheatin Baptist college? Nah, I must have seen and heard that wrong. It wouldn't take Superman 10 weeks to finally haul in his first reception, whether he was in the habit of stepping out on Lois or not.

But the other name I saw clearly. A guard named Looney. Hey, if he can hook up with a tackle next to him named Tunes -- they'd be a perfect fit on one side of the Detroit Lions O-line. If they can find guys named Wiley and Coyote for the other side, it would round out the picture rather nicely. Who would center this bunch? Perhaps Yosemite Sam or the Tasmanian devil. Either that or bring back Dominic Raiola. All their mental attributes were pretty much the same. They have a guy named Swanson now hiking the ball. That seems totally out of place. Isn't he supposed to be selling frozen TV dinners somewhere? But I'm getting a little off-point here. Sorry.

Still, it seems a shame faithful NFL geeks such as myself should be subjected to such a pitiful match-up as Tenn and Jax. It was enough to do a little channel surfing. Click. There's FOX. All Republicans are superheros and all Democrats are wimpy lying morons. Click. MSNBC. They say just the opposite. Click. Anderson Cooper and CNN's merry band of disaster chasers are off to the latest scene of carnage. With their various "experts", analysts, and an on-going panel the Warner Brothers cartoonists would have been proud of, nobody, and I mean nobody, can milk a story like the folks at CNN. The late Mel Blanc could have had a field day imitating these people.

And talk about insensitive. Imagine this question. "OK, you survived the mass shootings and bombings. So tell me, just exactly what was going through your mind when you were splattered by the blood and body parts of your spouse and children?"

Outrageous? Absolutely. But the TV talking heads and their roving band of video shooting body bag chasers often pose similar questions. They don't care. Anything for a story.

On a lesser plane, the NFL has adopted the same policy. Just give the idiot viewers something to placate them. It doesn't matter if we play games in London, thereby forcing fans to decide between church and a football game on Sunday morning. They'll tune in, while promising to drop double into the offering plate, sing twice as loud, and praise the Lord twice as much the following week.

Or even dumping the loser of all loser games on the public during prime time on a Thursday night. Tits and Jags. The dang fools will tune in anyway, because they don't know any better. We've had them hooked for a long time. We know it, and they know it. We could give them the Lions playing the Browns in Singapore at three in the morning local time, and the Nielsen ratings would be through the roof in Motown and on the shores of Lake Erie.

The most pitiful part of all? Yours truly indeed watched the Tits/Jags game. Count me among the fools. But it still doesn't make it right.

About Me

I attended the old Pontiac Central High School and went on to graduate from Oakland University with a Bachelor of Science in engineering. Wound up being an electrician at Pontiac Motors. Go figure.
Now retired, I'm finally beginning to appreciate all those years of forced piano lessons when I was a kid, occasionally make a nuisance of myself with certain editors, and enjoy riding my Harley. I see the same sports things you do, but maybe in a different way. So saddle up. Let's go for a ride.